Lecture date: October 17th 2017

Mille Miglia - Cars and Culture

In 1955 Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson won the 1000 mile open-road endurance race round ltaly with a staggering average speed of 98.53 mph which didn't allow them any time for pit stops or culture.

In 2014 Libby, driving an iconic red Alfa Romeo, followed the route in more leisurely fashion. In a multi-media lecture combining photographs, ﬁlm, songs, and quotations from writers and poets she offers a Kaleidoscopic view of the cars and characters involved in the race from its inception in 1927 together with numerous detours to sample local food, wine, music, architecture and art.

San Gim

Siena

MilleMiglia1932

About Libby Horner
Freelance art historian, curator, film producer, lecturer and writer. Libby is the world's leading authority on the multi-talented artist Frank Brangwyn and is compiling the catalogue raisonne of all his work - both fine and decorative art - estimated to be in excess of 12,000 items!

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Lecture date: November 14th 2017

Persistent Memory: The Art of Salvador Dalí

"This lecture is essentially an overview of the life and work of Salvador Dalí.
I begin by considering the painter's early life and influences and the variety of styles he tried before developing and settling on his own idiosyncratic style.
Dalí came late to Surrealism and was ousted by its controlling leader Andre Breton before too many years had passed. Nevertheless Dalí is often regarded as the archetypal Surrealist. I discuss this notion but also explain Dalí's personal response to Surrealism, in particular the approach he called his 'paranoiac critical activity', one which spawned works such as The Persistence of Memory and Metamorphosis of Narcissus."

About Angela Smith

From Angela's website:

I gained a first in Art History at Leicester University in the early 1980s. After a year working with adults with special needs, I studied for a PhD at the Warburg Institute in London under the supervision of the late J.B. Trapp. My subject was the life and building activity of Richard Fox, an Early-Tudor bishop of Winchester and founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. After completing my PhD, I took a break from academe, to concentrate on raising my children. Though I continued to research in spare moments and also took the opportunity to give talks in schools on historical subjects.

Before moving to Somerset, I spent more than a decade teaching mature learners in Lifelong Learning for Leicester University, taking students on field trips and teaching undergraduates for the Department of History of Art & Film. I also devised and delivered a number of undergraduate modules for Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln in connection with the Heritage Degree programme. Those modules included an architectural and cultural history of the English country house and a survey of English church art and architecture. In between teaching commitments, I have worked as a researcher for the National Inventory of Continental European Paintings (NICE), liaising with museum staff in the Midlands and cataloguing their holdings. I have also led art history classes for Remit, a scheme organised by Leicester City Council for adults with mental health issues.
I became an accredited NADFAS lecturer in 2006 and have travelled widely speaking to groups in the UK and further afield. In 2012 I was invited by ADFAS to Australia for a lecture tour. I now regularly tour lead in Spain for ADFAS and also the Sydney based company, Academy Travel.

I have published articles and reviews in scholarly journals on a diverse range of subjects including Thomas More, early Tudor stained glass and Netley Abbey. My research for NICE culminated in a number of online entries and I contributed sections to two CD Roms produced for the Christianity and Culture Project at the University of York . Recently, a friend and I have formed our own publishing company, The Book Forge, and have successfully launched three books: A Timeline for Family Historians, A Timeline of Art History and also a history of the Leicestershire village in which I lived for 12 years. I am currently completing an edition of medieval building accounts to be published by the Oxford Historical Society.

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Lecture date: November 28th 2017

From the Depths of the Past: Rock Art from Sulawesi toSpain

Málaga's caverns contain thousands of painted and engraved images from the Palaeolithic, in fact this province boasts the largest concentration of art from that period in the Mediterranean and one of the largest on the European continent. The caves with paleolithic paintings in Málaga are for instance La Pileta, Ardales, Nerja and La Victoria. Where are all these caves? What did they paint and why? Where did these people come from? How do they compare to other caves in Europe and outside of Europe like South Africa, India, Indonesia, Siberia, Australia and elsewhere? How come there is similarity in the drawings all over the world? And these drawings, how old are they? Were they done by the Neanderthals 40.000 BP or is that just a hoax? We will be looking in depth at the most beautiful hidden images from the depths of the Past and the earth, animals, humans, symbols, realistic and abstract communication from a far away world, from our ancestors.

About Helen Sijsling
Born in Australia, lived in The Netherlands, studied English language and Literature at the University of Leyden and read English literature and philosophy at Oxford University. Was a teacher of English for more than 18 years. Studied History of Art at the University of Leyden and Educational Management at the University of Amsterdam. Was a management consultant for education for 15 years, advising directors of secondary schools on educational improvement and training teachers in modern ways of teaching. Has given lectures to the history group and Probus on Spanish historical subjects and Nadfas Nerja on art historical subjects. Has been lecturing in Holland since 1995 on among other subjects brain research related to learning.

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Lecture date: December 12th 2017

The Honourable East India Company: East West Trade, 1600 - 1800, Chinese Export and Chinoiserie

This lecture explores the way in which the East India Company developed its methods of trade. It shows how the 17th century textile trade with India established a methodology for sending out patterns to be copied by the artisans, replacing the original system of importing textiles that were native in design. The system of sending out patterns to be copied was the norm by the time the East India Company made inroads into China in the 18th century – a precursor of modern trading methods. The Company rapidly evolved its strategies, sending out several ships at a time to China and eventually setting up permanent settlements in Macao. The currency and balance of trade is explained, and methods of production are illustrated with a number of Chinese export pieces, predominantly Chinese painted silks but also including furniture and porcelain.
The concludes with drawing the distinction between Chinese export and Chinoiserie, using examples made in Europe during the same period.

About Vivienne Lawes
Viv Lawes is a lecturer, curator, author and journalist, with over twenty years’ experience in the art market.

She works at several prestigious Higher Education institutions in London, leading the Modern and Contemporary unit of the Asian Art & Its Markets semester course at Sotheby’s Institute and the History of Decorative Style (c.1400-1970) course at the City & Guilds of London Art School. She also lectures for the University of the Arts and IESA (Institut d’Etudes Supérieures des Arts), London.

As Senior UK Consultant to Singapore gallery One East Asia since 2011, she has co-curated many exhibitions of Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art in London and Singapore. Her current project is a book is on themes in equine sculpture, commissioned by the Sladmore Gallery, London.

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Lecture date: January 9th 2018

Riviera Paradise: Art, Design and Pleasure in the 20s and 30s

Mary Alexander

sponsor: Liberty Seguros

Since the C19 English high society had 'wintered over' on the Cote d'Azur, but always left by April. In the early 1920's, however, an intoxicating mix of artists, writers, musicians and international visitors, inspired by a mythological seascape of luminous colours, created a new summer season. Sun tans and sportswear soon became 'de rigueur' in the chic new coastal resorts, villas and hotels. This liberating playground of ideas across the visual design arts was stimulated by impresarios Serge Diaghilev and Paul Poiret. Traditional boundaries were torn down. Matisse, Picasso, Dufy, Cocteau, and Chanel merged the worlds of fashion, theatre and interiors. Cole Porter, Scott Fitzgerald, and the intriguing Gerald and Sara Murphy, introduced an American perspective and attracted an influential new set of discerning patrons and collectors. We will 'time travel' to meet them.

About Mary Alexander
Thirty years' experience as a lecturer, with a BA in History and History of Art and a MA with distinction in History of Art from University College London. Experience includes public lectures in museums, tutoring for the Open University, visiting lecturer at Christie's Education in London, museum curator at Platt Hall, the Gallery of Costume, Manchester. Now a freelance lecturer to various arts, heritage and antiquarian societies. She also worked in Pentagram design consultancy in London and New York, organising conferences and special events. Author of various articles on design and visual awareness issues, her background combines an unusual blend of academic and visual communications skills. Lectured for ADFAS Australia and New Zealand in 2011 and 2013. Mary is an enthusiastic member and President of Glaven Valley DFAS.

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Lecture date: January 16th 2018

Federico García Lorca: His Life, Times and Literary Legacy

A description of the life and works of the most well-known Spanish poet and dramatist of the 20th century - an iconic figure personifying the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War.
His life is seen against the background of Spanish history at that time from the 1898 Spanish American War (the year of his birth) through the Primo de Riviera dictatorship and the Second Republic to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 (the year of his execution).

The themes of his works - he wrote 11 books of poems and 9 plays - will be discussed, and there will be readings of a selection of his poems in Spanish and English, as well as a look at the importance of the three Spanish cities in his life: Granada, Madrid and Barcelona, and his close friendship with Salvador Dali´.

The poems in Spanish will be read by Jose Manuel Cabezas, head of the English department at the Nerja High School, a Fullbright scholar with excellent English, who has given two lectures for Nadfas on the flora and fauna of the Nerja countryside.

About Roberta Kettel
Roberta Kettel has lived in Spain since 1991 and has been involved with NADFAS in Nerja since its beginnings in 1993. Roberta was the society’s chairman for four years from 2002-2006, and has organized more than twenty trips around Spain for the society between 1996-2008. She is presently responsible for the Capistrano lecture season, organises trips for the Capistrano Travel Club, and has given lectures on different topics associated with Spanish culture and literature to the Nerja History Group and NADFAS societies along the Costa del Sol. She talked to us about Hemingway in October 2016.

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Lecture date: February 13th 2018

Born Marie Godebska, daughter of a Polish sculptor living in France, Misia was brought up in Brussels and Paris where she became a pupil of Gabriel Fauré and a noted concert pianist. In 1893 she married Thadée Natanson owner of ‘La Revue Blanche’ an important art magazine which featured the work of Bonnard, Vuillard, and Toulouse–Lautrec all of whom painted and drew the beautiful and talented Misia Natanson. Renoir painted her portrait while declaring her love for her, as did Edouard Vuillard and during the 1890’s the Natansons were at the centre of the Paris art world.

Toulouse Lautrec, 1895

Misia’s life changed when her husband lost his money which led to the breakdown of her marriage. She met and married a rich industrialist Alfred Edwards and Misia enjoyed her role as a wealthy patron of artists and musicians. Maurice Ravel dedicated ‘La Cygne’ and ‘La Valse’ to Misia who also accompanied Caruso on the piano. In 1909 the marriage ended when Edwards fell for the young actress Genevieve Lantelme. Misia soon met and married José-Maria Sert a highly successful Spanish painter of extravagant murals.

1908 Misia saw a production of ‘Boris Godunov’ designed by Serge Diaghilev thus starting a close relationship with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Misia helped finance the company and took a keen interest in the new music by Stravinsky, Satie and others. She was with Diaghilev when he died in Venice in 1929.

In 1917 Misia met Coco Chanel and admired “her genius, lethal wit, sarcasm and maniacal destructiveness, which intrigued and appalled everyone”: these two extraordinary women were inseparable in their later years. This is an extraordinary and fascinating story of a talented and beautiful woman who was muse and patron of the arts who has been described as ‘The Queen of Paris’.

About Julian HalsbyJulian Halsby studied History of Art at Cambridge. Formerly Senior Lecturer and Head of Department at Croydon College of Art. Publications include Venice - the Artist's Vision (1990, 1995), The Art of Diana Armfield RA (1995), Dictionary of Scottish Painters (1990, 1998, 2001, 4th edition 2010), A Hand to Obey the Demon's Eye (2000), Scottish Watercolours 1740 - 1940 (1986, 1991), A Private View - David Wolfers and the New Grafton Gallery (2002). Interviews artists for The Artist Magazine and is a member of the International Association of Art Critics and The Critics Circle. A practising artist, he was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1994 and appointed Keeper in 2010.
Julian talked to us in May 2015 about British and Amercian artists in Venice.
Julian's website

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Lecture date: February 20th 2018

The 7 areas of Contemporary Art Photography

Ludo Slabbaert

Morning lecture

venue: Museo de Nerja at 11:00

How can we better understand the contemporary art photography when looking at art photos in a gallery, at an art exhibition or in a catalogue ?

In this lecture Belgian amateur photographer Ludo Slabbaert will reveal an easy and practical way to interpret art photos by dividing them into seven different categories. These categories or areas- as he likes to call them- were chosen to avoid giving the impression that it is either style or the choice of the subject that determines the characteristics of current art photography. He will illustrate his system by lots of photos of well known art photographers.

About Ludo Slabbaert

Ludo Slabbaert was born in 1950 and studied Photo-Art at the Royal Academy of Arts in his home-town Antwerp. He is a member of several photo-clubs even in Nerja and an official lecturer for the Flemish Amateur Photographers’ Society. He is a specialist in large format landscapes and in the reconstruction of old glass plate negatives.

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Lecture date: March 13th 2018

Pop Art on both sides of the Atlantic

Pop art arose simultaneously in the UK and USA. Perhaps Andy Warhol was right when he said everyone was reading the same comics. While British Pop art was heavily influenced by the consumer boom and the films and music of the USA, it had its own identity,
which was often ironic and self-reflective. American Pop art had the superstars including Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, who simply used the formats of advertising, mass production,

Warhol

magazines and comics, to play back to the public what the public was already eating, watching or thinking. This lecture will use a collection of Pop art paintings to explain the differences between British and American Pop art, and why some British artists, after trying it, distanced themselves from it. This lecture will be jargon-free with audience engagement, backed by high quality slides.

About Ray Warburton
Ray Warburton studied art history at the Open University and the University of Buckingham. he is a Guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, who leads public tours of all the permanent displays and also undertakes exhibition tours.He is an experienced public speaker who has given presentations and lectures on a range of themes to diverse audiences over many years.

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Lecture date: March 27th 2018

George Orwell: Life with my father

"I will be working through his life and the salient points from childhood, school, Burma, tramping in London and Paris, his visit to Wigan and his time in the Spanish Civil War, his writings (novels and travelogues) illness. BBC, his huge out put of essays and articles, writing his last 2 novels, my life with him in London and on the Island of Jura and finally his death. I intersperse this with random readings from some of his more significant essays and poems. "

" The subtitle is the title of the exhibition that is ongoing until the 25th June (Orwell's birthday) in Huesca and if anybody has a mind to, it is more than well worth going to. The title is a quotation taken from Homage To Catalonia. "

About Richard Blair

The last years of Orwell's life are generally thought to have been heroically grim: the privations of World War II in London, his wife Eileen’s early death on the operating table, the shortages of the postwar years, his self-exile from London to the cold isolation of a primitive farmhouse on the Isle of Jura off the Scottish coast, the dogged composition of his nightmare masterpiece “1984,” much of it while he was bedridden with T.B., the final agony of his illness in a series of sanitoria, death in 1950 at forty-six years old. No wonder he acquired the posthumous title of St. George.

Most Orwell readers know that he and Eileen adopted a son, Richard. And that’s about all they know of Richard Blair (George Orwell was the pseudonym of Eric Blair), who has kept his silence throughout his life—until now.

So who is Orwell’s son? A retired engineer, who lives in a picturesque village in Warwickshire, and who has entirely happy memories of having spent his first six years in the company of the author of “Homage to Catalonia” and “Animal Farm.”
Orwell, by his son’s account, was a wonderful father. He gave Richard his devoted if rather rugged attention, and a degree of freedom that readers of contemporary parenting books would consider actionable. A small boy’s life with the great and dying writer was an endless adventure in the wonders and rigors of the natural world around their country house, even if most of the shared experiences Richard still remembers were of near-disasters. One fishing expedition to a shepherd’s hut on the remote part of Jura ended in a storm, with Orwell, Richard, and his three cousins nearly drowning in the Gulf of Corryvreckan. Orwell, struggling in the whirlpool that had capsized their boat, noticed a seal watching them and remarked, “Curious thing about seals, very inquisitive creatures.”

That’s the voice that described crawling through a coal mine in northern England and taking a bullet in the throat in Spain: detached, a bit austere, but alert and alive to the world. No one ever accused Orwell of being sentimental. In fact, he has a reputation for personal reserve, even coldness, and one feminist critic based a whole book on the premise that Orwell’s pessimistic vision was a product of misogyny and male dominance.

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Lecture date: April 10th 2018

Art and Life in Santa Fé, New Mexico

This colourful lecture is based on two decades’ personal experience of a unique art colony. Nowhere else in the USA have Native American, Spanish and Anglo cultures grown side by side as they have here, and this diversity, along with the glorious light of the high desert, has attracted artists since the early days of the railroad. The history of this still-thriving colony is rich, strange and full of remarkable characters, including British visitors like DH Lawrence and famous American artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe.

About James RussellJames Russell studied History at Pembroke College, Cambridge, but was galvanized into writing about art by a lengthy stint selling contemporary paintings and sculpture in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A passionate advocate of 20th century painting and design, he writes and lectures widely. His books include the popular 4-volume series Ravilious in Pictures, about British watercolourist and designer Eric Ravilious (1903-42), and other titles devoted to Paul Nash, Peggy Angus, Edward Bawden and Edward Seago. He curated the 2015 exhibition Ravilious at Dulwich Picture Gallery and has lectured all over the country, from Rye to Glasgow and from the V&A to the Royal West of England Academy.

"Having spent five years selling art on the city's Canyon Road (think Bond Street with cowboy hats), I can offer an intimate picture of Santa Fe: it's inspiring, funny and occasionally scandalous."

Lecture date: May 16th 2018

Córdoba Mosque, a fusion of cultures

Jacqueline Cockburn PhD MA BA

sponsor: Friend of NADFAS

This lecture considers the arrival of the Moors in Spain in 711, their fast invasion and the process of the building of the Mosque at Córdoba. It will outline the different building stages, the establishing of a Caliphate in Cordoba and highlight changes in regimes over the 800 years in which the Moors remained in Spain. This period of fertile growth in the arts and sciences will be discussed with reference to poetry and philosophy. The extraordinary beauty and serenity of the Mosque will be unravelled in such a way that visitors will also understand the subtle secrets and messages hidden in the architectural decorations and Arabic inscriptions. The building of the church in the centre of the Mosque will be discussed within the light of a fusion of cultures, considering whether the Christians dispelled or preserved the Moors. It will end with a discussion of the meaning of the building today.

About Jacqueline Cockburn
A linguist and art historian, with first degrees in French and Spanish and Art History, an MA in Applied Linguistics and a PhD in Art History and Spanish on 'The Drawings of García Lorca as gifts, citations and exchanges'. Has taught at Westminster School since 1984 as Head of Art History for 16 years and has lectured at Birkbeck for 20 years. She is now Managing Director of an art tour company. She is currently publishing a book on Masterpieces of Art in London.

From her company, Art and Culture Travel, website:
Jacqueline is a specialist in Western European Art History, Literature and Language, and is Managing Director of Art & Culture Travel. She originally graduated from Durham University in Modern Languages and then took an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. She completed a second BA Degree in 1996 in Art History and a PhD in 2002 at the University of London in Art History and Spanish. Her doctoral thesis dealt with Garcia Lorca’s drawings. She also speaks fluent Spanish, French and Portuguese.

Jacqueline began working at Westminster School as a teacher of Modern Languages and Literature, and later spent 16 years as Head of the Department of Art History. During this period she was also Chief Examiner in Art History at Cambridge International Examinations for 8 years and an Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London for 15 years, where she directed and wrote courses as well as teaching History of Art at all levels from Undergraduate to Post-Graduate. She is also a NADFAS accredited lecturer.

She has taken students on numerous trips to Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, New York and Berlin over the years and her knowledge of organizing and running these trips to ensure that the experience is enriching culturally and intellectually is extensive.

She has published ‘The Spanish Song Companion (1992 Gollancz- reprinted in 2005 in the United States), and been a contributor to ‘Fire, Blood and the Alphabet’ (2000 Durham University Press), ‘Crossing Fields’ (2003 Legenda Press) and ‘A Companion to Federico García Lorca’ (2007 Tamesis Press). She is currently working on Picasso’s Andalusian origins.